OCR Releases Raw Civil Rights Data for 2023-24 School Year

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) quietly released data from the 2023–24 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) eight months after its internal deadline. However, the only files available are raw data tables, making it nearly impossible for the public to understand how children, including children with disabilities, fared over the 2023-2024 school year. The collection itself is vast and includes data that directly impacts students with disabilities, including suspensions and expulsions, teacher quality measures, and the use of physical and mechanical restraint and seclusion. 

Many measures are disaggregated by race/ethnicity and sex, allowing administrators and researchers to examine disparities affecting students with disabilities. Previous data collections have included searchable tables that provide public snapshots of key data elements at the state and national levels. For this data collection, that column of the CRDC data page is listed as “N/A.” Researchers will need to synthesize the raw data to make it useful to the general public.

Find a snapshot of the data gathering process here and download data files/view previous collection information here. To view reactions about the failure to release state and national data tables, go here.